Alipay demos e-payment's future with face recognition

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As Jack Ma's announcement of a science research base came this morning, Alibaba's close friend Alipay also revealed its vision of tomorrow's payment market.

With a keyword "smart," Ant Financial (Alipay's parent company) demonstrated what our future digital life may look like during the Ant Technology Exploration Conference (ATEC), held alongside Alibaba's developer conference.

You can use natural gestures to order a meal in a smart restaurant, or authorize payment with a simple face-scan. Check the video above to watch our live experiencing of those features.

The company also made bold claims that its face recognition algorithm is the best in the world, which can provide financial-level safety to banks with a single-lens camera.

The ATEC hall in eastern China's Hangzhou /ATEC Photo

"Apple's FaceID is good because of the specially-designed hardware, but it cannot actually recognize you," Cheng Li, CTO of Ant Financial, told CGTN. "It can only compare your face to the one that's stored in the iPhone. But our technology can actually tell who you are. There's a huge difference."

Based on Apple's current description of FaceID, a face-reading vendor machine is not possible, while Ant Financial's "Smile to Pay" service is already running commercially in a KFC restaurant in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, where Alibaba is headquartered in.

Now the technology has been further applied on hotel management systems and man-less restaurant experiences, as showcased in ATEC.

"We're confident that the future of e-payment can be even more convenient," Cheng said in a press release.